There’s little hiding the glee with which Olivia Coleman chews through her share of the expletives abundant in Wicked Little Letters. A renowned potty mouth unleashed. Astonishingly, this new British comedy, from Me Before You director Thea Shamrock, is based on entirely true events. Though the script is that of comedian Jonny Sweet, the crudities come lifted from poison pen letters sent in 1920s Littlehampton. It’s like a ‘foxy ass’ Downton Abbey, had Lady Grantham slipped in the occasional f**k at high tea.
Dubbed ‘the seaside mystery’ in one Daily Mail editorial, the scandal sent shockwaves through Littlehampton. Local residents found themselves subject to months of mucky mail and a tirade of handwritten and increasingly fruity abuse. While many in the town fell victim, the lion’s share of letters sullied the door mat of Edith Swan (Coleman).
A pious and imperiously upstanding type, Edith lives under the thumb of her domineering father (Timothy Spall – monstrous) and with her timid mother (Gemma Jones). She’s the only of her siblings not to have flown the nest, although she came close once upon a time. Next door is Rose Gooding, Edith’s polar opposite and a riotous turn from Jessie Buckley. She’s an Irish motor mouth with a gob as course as her un-scrubbed kitchen floor. It takes all of five minutes for the town’s constabulary to nail her with the blame. It takes a mere two minutes longer for us to work out the truth.
Only WPO Gladys Moss – a fabulously expressive Anjana Vasan – smells a stitch up. The evidence is slight and largely grounded in her penchant for dropping an F-bomb in public. For one thing, Rose’s handwriting bears no resemblance to that of the poison pen. For another, it makes scant sense as to why the openly verbose Rose would see any merit in anonymising her tirades: ‘why would I write it when I can just say it?’ There’s also the small matter of it being essential for Rose to stay on the right side of the law for the benefit of her young daughter Nancy (Matilda’s Alisha Weir). A year of hard labour would rob her of both liberty and maternal custody.
Alongside the evident racial bias is a backdrop acutely aware of the ongoing movement for women’s suffrage. Edith is upheld, by her father at least, as the antithesis of women’s lib. Rose would struggle to look less like she travelled to Littlehampton via a star turn in Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette if she tried. ‘She’s what we feared would come after the war,’ says Edith. Rose threatens an establishment unprepared for the post-war world to not look exactly like that which came before. Far from it. As Eileen Atkins’ disgruntled Mabel remarks, expectations of female decency mattered a lot less when women were needed in the munition factories.
Such is not to suggest that Wicked Little Liars is tethered to biting social critique, even as contemporary resonance arises. The film hasn’t quite the conviction to see that through. Similar critique can be levelled at the film’s precarious approach to tone. What opens in the realms of Agatha Christie soon, somewhat unconvincingly, traverses kitchen sink and courtroom drama territory. More satisfying are scenes of high farce, particularly as a capering battle of wits comes to the fore. It is in such instances Shamrock appears to be having the most fun – infectiously so.
Without the strength of plotting to feed drama through the film’s diaphragm of daft, Wicked Little Letters can’t help but feel like a film trying to have it’s cake and eat it, even is said cake looks like it has ‘fallen out of some f***ing sheep’s f***ing arsehole’. Coleman and Buckley are tremendous but it’s not quite a first class delivery all round.